I was recently reading in Forbes Magazine that the U.S. has had the best first quarter for mergers since 2000 with $414.7 billion (£267 billion), and it was the best first quarter ever for Asian (non-Japan) M&A with $199.7 billion (£128 billion).

In fact, the first quarter of 2015 will go down as the richest first quarter for mergers and acquisitions since Q1 2007. According to data from Thomson Reuters there has already been more than $843 billion (£543 billion) in global M&A activity this year. That’s 23.3 percent higher than the $694 billion (£447 billion) of M&A activity in the first quarter of last year, and nearly 72 percent higher than Q1 2013.

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Acronis has unveiled the first public beta of Acronis True Image 2016 for Windows XP+ and Mac.

The headline addition this time is continuous mobile cloud backup for up to 10 iOS or Android devices.

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) is about to become a lot more environmentally friendly after announcing the construction of an 80 megawatt solar farm.

The green proposal will generate 170,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of solar power each year, the equivalent of approximately 15,000 US homes.

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UK consumer watchdog Which? tested a range of popular tablets and discovered that when it comes to speed, there’s only one champion, and that’s Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3.

It turns out it wasn’t only Microsoft’s slate that bested Apple’s tablets in the speed stakes. The iPad mini 3, which sells for £319 in the UK, was beaten by the Tesco Hudl 2 which costs just £99.

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It’s no secret that Chrome for Mac hogs more resources than Safari. The browser by Google has been receiving heat from experts and users alike for shortening their laptop's battery life by 2-3 hours. The good news is that the company finally seems committed to resolving these glitches.

Earlier this month the Mountain View-based giant took its first major step at bringing improvements to its browser when it announced that Chrome will begin to automatically pause flash content on web-pages if a user hasn’t looked at it in a while. The company is now sharing other efforts it is making to improve Chrome.

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NTFS permissions are a great way to control exactly what users can access on your system, at least in theory. So it’s a shame that their standard Windows interface is so complex and tedious, yet still doesn’t give you access to all the features you might need,

NTFS Permissions Tools is a free portable utility which makes it easier to perform some common security tasks, and adds a few expert-level bonus features as well.

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Apple’s recently announced streaming music service is being viewed by many as a potential Spotify killer. Spotify might have more than 20 million paying subscribers and over 75 million active users, but Apple is a force that cannot be ignored, and being late to the party means nothing.

So should Spotify be concerned about the forthcoming battle with Apple? Unquestionably. Although, if new research is to be believed, it’s Apple that should be worrying the most.

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Most marketers are focused on providing a personalized experience for the customer. However, many still rely on email communication. Whilst this is still an effective delivery method there’s an inevitable time lag in the message arriving by which time it could be out of date.

That delay may be a thing of the past as eCommerce specialist Reflektion is launching Right Time Messaging. This has the ability to hyper personalize emails to individual recipients right up to the moment the message is opened.

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If you have experienced random reboots with your Lumia Windows Phone 8.1 smartphone, you should know that Microsoft is now rolling out a software update specifically to fix this annoying problem.

The software update, so far, seems to target only Lumia 730, Lumia 830, Lumia 930 and Lumia 1520 smartphones. Even though Windows Phone 8.1 Update 2 has long been available, the software update for the aforementioned handsets does not include the latest official version of the tiled smartphone operating system.

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While choosing which iPhone to buy is a fairly simple decision -- there just aren't many options to choose from -- it's a very different matter for Android fans. The wealth of hardware manufacturers producing an endless stream of handsets means that a trip to the phone store, physical or online, can be overwhelming.

Today Google launches a new tool that can be used to home in on the perfect Android handset for you. Answer a few simple questions about the types of thing you need from a phone, and the wide selection of devices will be whittled down to those that are just right for you.

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Digital comics often arrive in comic book archive files, with extensions like cbz, cbr, cbt, cb7 or cba. These aren’t commonly used outside the comic world and it may not be immediately obvious how to view them. Fortunately, it’s quite easy, and you might be able to do it right away. These are just regular archives and something like 7-Zip can extract their contents just like anything else (right-click > 7-Zip > Extract…). Every page will be saved as a separate image. If that doesn’t work, rename the file to have its standard archive extension -- cbz > zip, cbr > rar, cbt > tar, cb7 > 7z, cba > ace -- and try again.

Another option is to convert the comic into something that’s more commonly supported. CBR and CBZ to PDF is a simple free example which does exactly what its name suggests, TEBookConverter takes the idea further with a host of extra eBook formats. Of course if you’re a real comic fan then it’s far better to install a suitable viewer, and there are plenty of capable free options available.

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Video streaming service Netflix has announced another price increase to its monthly subscription, now costing £7.49 per month to watch House of Cards, Better Call Saul and other favorites in the UK.

The price increase is the second in the company’s history. It bumped the price up from the original £5.99 to £6.99 two years ago, following an expansion in Netflix Originals.

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The next update to Apple’s mobile web browser Safari will include a way to block annoying ads, working similar to AdBlock Plus on desktop browsers.

Under the banner of user experience, Apple promoted the new loading system capable of blocking JavaScript, cookies and even images from displaying. The system came to the desktop version of Safari first. Users will be able to opt-in to this experience on iOS 9.

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Limitation breeds creativity. When a person's proverbial hands are tied, their humanity will always shine through. In other words, the human mind finds a way. Humans are very resourceful; for example, prisoners can make alcohol in a toilet. Yum.

Twitter is another good example of a limitation breeding creativity. You see, the 140 character limitation can make it difficult to communicate, forcing the user to think outside the box. While some people find it to be harmful to the English language -- use of abbreviations and lack of punctuation -- I find it to be healthy exercise for the mind. Today, Twitter announces that it will be removing this limitation -- on direct messages (DMs), that is. Is this change good or bad?

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Bounty hunters can make a killing if they uncover security problems with software. There are lots of companies who will pay out in cold, hard cash to anyone who managed to unearth security vulnerabilities, and Mozilla has announced that it is increasing its top level bounty.

The company is appealing to white hat hackers and security experts to help plug holes in its software, and it is willing to cough up for it. Mozilla's security program had already paid out $1.6 million over the years, and the Client Bug Bounty Program has just been updated so that maximum payout is now $10,000.

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